Current technology has brought about the proliferation in use of electronics and electronic equipment. It becomes increasingly important to protect sensitive electronic equipment from the effects of electromagnetic interference (EMI), high intensity radiated field (HIRF), and lightning to prevent potential failures or a system upset. One way to protect the equipment is to shield the wires that are connected to the equipment by adding a shield over the length of sensitive signal and/or power wires. The shield is usually constructed from several small gauge wires braided over the internal signal and/or power wires or conductors. The shield absorbs radiated energy and distributes the energy away from the internal conductors and their connected electronic component. The wires forming the shields are typically grounded at every connector interface throughout the electrical system. Proper grounding of each shield is an important aspect of protecting sensitive electronic equipment.
Most products on the market today use a backshell assembly with a compression ring to ground shields, but they are very difficult and time-consuming to assemble and disassemble. For example, with currently available backshell assemblies, the shields must be manually separated from their respective internal conductors and then threaded through small isolated termination holes in the compression ring to terminate the shields. A person uses either a crochet-like hook or a pick to pull the shields through the holes. This process has the disadvantages of being difficult, tedious and slow, because it is akin to threading a needle, only with much coarser filaments and little room for maneuverability. Moreover, when there are a large number of shields in the wire harness, the task becomes nearly impossible due to the spacing constraints. The internal conductors, from which the shields have been separated, are connected to connector pins for making the next level of electrical connection in the system.
Once the shields are terminated in the termination holes, the backshell is screwed tightly onto the mating connector to compress the shields between the compression ring and the backshell to obtain a good electrical connection between the shields and the backshell. During this process small fragments of the shield, from the braided small gauge wires, can fray, break and fall into the connector which can then cause electrical shorting of the connector pins. Another problem encountered in the prior art is that shields tend to become crushed after undergoing repeated vibrations and thermal cycling, and loss of electrical contact can occur. Once this happens, the functionality of the shield is lost, and the attendant electronic component would no longer be shielded from radiated energy.
Hence, a need exists for a shield termination connector assembly that is simple to assemble and use, that does not damage portions of the shields during assembly, and that does not require special hand tools for feeding the shields into termination holes.